The Liddell Hart Collection is a highly individual fashion archive, containing not only works directly concerning fashion, but also on feminism, psychology of dress and the social scene and society at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth century. It contains some delightful books of drawings by famous illustrators such as Charles Dana Gibson, Mars and Guillaume. There are approximately 350 books in the collection, but it also contains some scrapbook material of cartoons, poems and cuttings on modes and manners of the nineteenth century, folders of original early coloured fashion plates and many other interesting items.
The collection includes copies of Sir Basil's own writings covering several years from 1947. There is a very good collection of ladies' periodicals, predominantly nineteenth century, which includes runs of Belle Assemblee; a rarely-found set of Modern Society; two copies of Aglaia: Journal of the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union; and Beeton's Young Englishwoman, complete with the original free paper patterns.